The Public Interest in Preventing Breaches of The Peace
In R v Coney (1882) 8 QBD 534, members of the public who attended an illegal prize fight in a public place were convicted of aiding and abbetting an assault. They were cheering on the boxers whose conduct was likely to and did produce a breach of the peace, so any mutual consent given by the fighters was vitiated by the public nature of the entertainment irrespective of the degree of injury caused or intended. Hence, the principal offence was committed and, since it would not have taken place had there been no crowd to bet and support the fighters, the secondary parties were also liable.
Read more about this topic: Consent (criminal Law)
Famous quotes containing the words public, interest, preventing and/or peace:
“Indigenous to Minnesota, and almost completely ignored by its people, are the stark, unornamented, functional clusters of concrete—Minnesota’s grain elevators. These may be said to express unconsciously all the principles of modernism, being built for use only, with little regard for the tenets of esthetic design.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The most ingenious men continually pretend to condemn tricking—but this is often done that they may use it more conveniently themselves, when some great occasion or interest offers itself to them.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America, it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)
“Here Men from The Planet Earth
First Set Foot upon The Moon
July, 1969 AD
We Came in Peace for All Mankind”
—Plaque left behind on the moon’s surface by the crew of Apollo 11.